Question: What do people in this community recommend for self-hosted instant messanger projects? I host a VOIP service for my nerd herd and due to recent events i’m attempting to migrate out groups chats off of the major platforms (Discord, Google chats, Slack, Etc.) as well.
There are a few notes that were requested/requirements.
- Self-hosted
- Supports images
- Has a decent mobile app
- Encrypted communication
- Expected load ~25 users.
I am doing my own digging but wanted to hear the communites opinions on some of the projects that came up in searches.
- IRC/XMPP - dosent really work for the request but is a classic, so I feel had to mention it.
- Rocket.Chat - seems like the best option so far, but I was having trouble finding current reviews, and its licensing is a bit much.
- Matrix also is close to checking all the boxes, but it wasnt clear how it works on mobile (Element seemed like the mobile app that was recommended).
- Revolt was high on the SEO results but most of the discussion around it was about drama with the maintainers (that is what prompted this post, i’m fishing for more current opinions).
- Zulip seemed similar to Rocket.Chat, but more expensive if we had to get a license.
I appreciate peoples opinions and recomendations on this topic.
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I’ve been using a self hosted matrix server for the past year, no complaints so far and since a lot of technical rooms already exist on other matrix servers, interoperability is a big plus. Also element mobile app is pretty decent but there are plenty of other alternative apps too.
The new Element X app is awesome and it support the new Matrix 2.0. I highly recommend Matrix
Yes, absolutely. Might be a bit difficult to set up, OP if you have any problems you can contact me at @gregor:gregtech.eu and I’ll help out (:
You could look into prose. The interface of slack/discord/mattermost, built on XMPP, with E2EE.
Is that the same as prosody.im ?
That’s the one I’ve been looking at. It seems to be easy, but I haven’t had time to look into it fully.
It’s more comparable to Snikket. Both Snikket and Prose use Prosody as server with their own extensions.
Matrix works great. Element X is my favourite client.
You say XMPP doesn’t work for the request, why not?
@wildbus8979 @Bahnd Yeah, XMPP checks all the boxes. That said, I don’t know how well encrypted group chats (MUC) work with various clients.
Also, while message contents are encrypted, metadata is not. Self-hosting ameliorates that, but if your “self-hosting” involves a VPS or whatever hosted by a giant corporation, then that’s something to be aware of.
My last expirence with XMPP is very dated, my old groups in EvE online used it and it was perfect for its role as a sort of internet pager to summon the horde of nerds. Im aware there are many new related projects, discounting it seems a bit premature now, if you have any recomendations I would love to read their docs.
My concern is that I would have to pitch what ever project we landed on to a semi-technical group of gamers with a handful of admins to run things. (Trying to avoid a platform that gen-z would complain about, and they already roll their eyes at me when I mention spaceships and spreadsheets).
XMPP clients for Android are great, for iOS a bit less so. On Windows / Linux Gajim is probably the best option right now. JoinJabber.org has a good list of up to date clients (do not use Pidgin, it’s horrible and super outdated).
In general the main downside compared to Discord is the lack of voice-channels. 1:1 voice or video calls work great with the Android clients and group calls are partially supported in some desktop clients (that is currently very active field of development for XMPP clients).
Snikket seems to be it for iOS. But it does work pretty well, I haven’t run into any issues with it.
For Windows well, nothing does voice as far as I know.
Voice call implementation in Gajim is only waiting for an upstream improvement, it is already working otherwise. Sadly upstream seems slow in fixing this.
You can try this unofficial Windows version of Dino though, which supports calls: https://github.com/mxlgv/dino
Edit: and there is of course always Movim, which works fine in most browsers and supports 1:1 calls.
Cool, didn’t know about Dino, thanks!
Probably Matrix
I would recommend Matrix, tried all others, too. A bonus idea you could take a look at: https://github.com/balzack/databag
Why wouldn’t XMPP work? It fulfills all your requirements and has nice modern apps, especially for mobile. Definitely better than Matrix.
The easiest to get started with it would be setting up a Snikket server (Prosody based, but pre-configured for small private groups).
I ran an XMPP network based on prosody and used snikket on android. Can recommend!
I deployed RocketChat on two different client installations (didn’t check the licensing you’re mentioning, I’ll have to look into that) and I run a Prosody instance (XMPP) on my own; tried Matrix for a short while and ran away from that mess as fast as I could. anyhow, although the messengers work without any significant issues or downtime, the amount of flak I get from non-tech normies about the client apps is staggering.
the apps just aren’t up to current UX standards. they’re used to Twitter and iMessage and Telegram quality UX, and getting used to these PoC-quality apps - both on mobile and desktop - makes them “feel icky”. I’ve had to intervene on a number of occasions when some of them transferred their business-related comms to other platforms because they just can’t/won’t get used to these apps.
I’m not sure if matrix will ever be able to overcome this hurdle
We host a small Matrix-server. The server is for 4 people but barely uses the 2 cores 4GB RAM.
Storage is mostly media, but stayed under 100GB in about 3 years.
We also host a web frontend and use Schildichat as app, but Element X could be better nowadays. Both also have a desktop client.
A big plus are all the bridges. My girlfriend uses WhatsApp, no problemo, there is a bridge for that. That one club only has a signal group? Use the bridge.
One of us uses Fb-Messenger via a bridge. Telegram also works and there are lots more.The server is also low maintenance. It’s an ansible playbook, that I irregularly run.
It takes around an hour twice a year due to changes in the playbook.Also matrix is feature rich beyond your requests. I don’t know much about the others, but matrix had emoji-reactions before WhatsApp and has threads inside of chatrooms and spaces which are collections of chats for common topics.
Also polls, sharing current/live location (not bridged to WA), voice messages and stickers.All that bridge stuff has me interested. I’d just like to put all of my chats in one place. Matrix seems like the solution for that. Just bridge everything lol.
Just be aware that many times the service you are bridging doesnt like that you are. As an example, I was bridging solely for Facebook marketplace messages and they constantly were locking my account.
@Black616Angel Also for storage, you can define message retention (1 year or similar) so your storage would also not balloon over time. In my opinion chat is ephemeral in nature.
for matrix check out element X, which is X is the modernized version for matrix 2 protocol
they have a server side software you can selfhost too
You want Matrix. Synapse if you intend to host for others, Conduit if you just want to host for yourself. There are quite a few different clients but I do indeed use ElementX on mobile.
I’ve been having sync issues with conduit lately, takes minutes for the mobile app to catch up. No way to purge old media, or to use something S3-compatible for its storage either.
Also, element x doesn’t support spaces, so if you want to bridge other chats into matrix they all are going to be messed up together.
I like matrix as a concept, but both servers and clients are in a bit of a shitshow state (same as xmpp was years ago).
Spaces will come but I miss them too. Threads are another feather that I miss on Elemen X
It’s kind of depressing how fragmented the Matrix ecosystem is, a bunch of clients but none seem to support everything together, servers that are slow and bloated, and don’t support super basic maintenance tasks like cleaning up old stuff, etc…
It is pretty bad. After this thread I tried using Element X again only to learn that its “favorites” aren’t the same as Element’s “favorites” and more so you can’t set someone a favorite in E-X, at least not of your server is Conduit. It’s just silently ignored.
I host Rocket.Chat for my wife’s business. The free self-hosted version now allows up to 50 users before having to purchase a license (was 25 prior to the version 7 update). If you kick a user you simply deactivate their account and regain the user slot. Rather than deleting a user completely which would additionally delete any messages they’ve posted.
Easy to host, easy to upgrade. Mobile apps both IOS and Android work well.
I wanted to use Zulip as I felt the interface was cleaner. But the 10 user limit was a deal breaker.
WinPopup
+1 for matrix. Also check out schlidichat which is a nice client for matrix forked from Element
I’ll be intrested in the results of this thread
Same, I had already considered self hosting matrix but this will help find a few more options
